Capito promises VW investigation

Volkswagen Motorsport will complete a thorough analysis of the fuel supply parts that blighted the squad at XION Rally Argentina and brought to an end a run of 20 consecutive podiums.

The same problem halted Sébastien Ogier on Friday morning’s opening stage and Jari-Matti Latvala in Sunday’s penultimate El Condor test, when the Finn was on course for third in his Polo R.

Motorsport director Jost Capito said the problem had never been encountered in either testing or competition and denied the rough South American roads had caused the issue.

“It happens and luckily all our problems came together in one rally, so maybe it’s done for this year! It’s not related to the roughness of the rally, definitely not.

“We have to go back home and analyse the parts and see. The fact it happened twice helps us because we know it’s not a one-off,” Capito told wrc.com.

One area that will come under investigation is whether the failures were down to a faulty batch of injection systems.

Argentina was Volkswagen’s worst performance since it entered the championship in 2013. In addition to Ogier and Latvala’s problems, Andreas Mikkelsen retired after crashing in the final live TV Power Stage after stopping on Friday with broken power steering.